


Forward

by divine_rose



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Post-Canon, everyone has a long overdue talk, moonfire big bang, post kh3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28145025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divine_rose/pseuds/divine_rose
Summary: Immediately after the events of kh3, Lea gets a call to return to his home world and finds an unexpected surprise: Isa alive and well, mostly anyway. A look into the events immediately following after the battles, adjusting to peace for the first time since childhood and the mundane tasks a normal life brings (they both need some new clothes). All is seemingly benign at first but as the days tick on all the rot beneath the surface and everything left unsaid begins to fester. The weight of years of strife and divide cannot stay buried for long and must be reckoned with before it threatens to swallow them both whole once more.Written for the Moonfire Big Bang 2020.Artwork by: @rhivinde (twitter/instagram)
Relationships: Axel/Saïx (Kingdom Hearts), Isa/Lea (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17
Collections: MoonFire Big Bang 2020





	Forward

**Author's Note:**

> My piece for the LeaIsa Moonfire Big Bang 2020! I really wanted to explore all the unsaid tension that surely would have been there post kh3 after a decade of compounding baggage. Hope you all enjoy! :) 
> 
> Beautiful artwork by @rhivinde on twitter and instagram. Thank you so much for your incredible work and thank you mods for putting together such an amazing project!

* * *

It had been two weeks since the graveyard. Two weeks since Lea had gotten a gummi call in the middle of the night as far too many people crammed into one small gummi ship after the battle, he practically slammed his head on the low ceiling as the phone he forgot he had started ringing. The call telling him that he should forestall wherever he was going (only Ienzo would use words like _forestall)_ and come _home_ there was something here he had to see. 

Lea wished Ienzo hadn’t been so _cryptic_ and he wondered if it was a fashion of revenge. To make Lea sweat over whatever this news was as he nervously walked towards the castle. Lea knew he kind of deserved it but it didn’t make it suck any less or quell the tumultuous storm of anxiety in his gut. He rubbed his palms against his pants, he had finally changed out of the organization cloak and it felt both freeing and terrifying because it really was all behind him now. No more blaming mistakes or shitty actions on _the evil organization that I had been forced into as a zombified child_. His palms were sweaty and it was gross but it wasn’t going to stop so he might as well get it over with, swallowing on a suddenly dry throat as he knocked on the castle doors. 

He hadn’t been here since he woke up human again and then he has mentally sworn he would never return and yet here he was visiting his own grave again. Though technically speaking several places could be called his grave. 

Lea waited for a response, the spaces in between seconds stretching out in his anxious mind as he ran through everything and anything this would be about. 

_Lea we’re sorry to inform you but your parents are dead_

Well he long suspected that if he was honest

Mostly he was ruminating on being told that all of this, his regained humanity and regained friends were going to be taken away somehow. That this was _too_ good and the cosmic scale would balance yet again because Lea was not accustomed to having good luck in anything much less life. Good people deserve good things and Lea was not a good person and had done bad things so surely the universe must be winding up to punish him somehow. Because surely he could not have bought himself redemption from helping to guard the light because he didn’t forgive himself. 

He braced for that, for the worst of it, that there would be something _wrong_ with Roxas or Xion or that he was tainted somehow by all the years in the dark. 

Lea had been so deep in thought that he didn’t even notice the door opening and someone standing on the other side. A solid half a minute elapsed before they cleared their throat.

“Are you just going to stand there or are you going to come in?” 

Lea’s head snapped up at the sound of _that_ voice. His eyes straining from how wide they grew because he needed to be sure he was seeing this. 

“Isa?” 

* * *

It had been two weeks since the day Lea found out his friend was alive, that somehow he had managed to survive erasure as a Nobody to once again return to a human life. 

Lea has noted Isa’s eyes instantly. He had long studied the shape and color and how they changed over their years in the organization and beyond. For the bulk of Lea’s recent memory, his memory as _Axel,_ Isa—no, _Saix’s_ eyes had been crystallized amber. Hard and cut and cold with points sharp enough to draw blood when they looked at you. In the graveyard they had been different, wrong still but worn and weary somehow. These eyes now carried the weariness but they were a welcome return to a form Lea hadn’t seen in over a decade. 

This was really happening. Lea was somehow able to game the system and have all his friends returned to him which should frankly have been impossible. It was a pretty substantial high to ride. One that could easily trick someone into thinking that everything ever would be ok now, life was going to be _perfect_ because seemingly all his wants were met. All his people returned. 

For now the four of them, Lea, Isa, Roxas and Xion had all found a place to stay in Twilight Town. Radiant Garden held too many memories that neither of the two men wanted to address at the moment and there was a warm comfort and nostalgia in the sunset kissed town. There was a mostly unspoken acknowledgement that perhaps one day Radiant Garden would feel like home again but both, in full knowing of how the other would feel without even speaking it, came to the conclusion that the way they felt towards their homeworld was a bit too _raw_ at the moment. The memories of the events that branched out from the fall of their home and everything that came after were like an exposed wound and if left it would surely fester. A return this sound would surely be salt in a sore so Twilight Town it was, even if the warm memories it held were sorely Lea’s, Isa would not protest. 

After all he knew how important this place was, this place where he found Lea before the final battle where they both thought in equal measure of the very real possibility that they would not return. Isa more so, he had known his end would come during the graveyard, wished for it even, for the alternative would be far worse. Yet here he was. Admittedly he had not factored survival into his carefully laid plans to undermine Xehanort. 

Neither of them did admittedly. The thought of coming back home to them _all_ coming back home seemed too far fetched a dream. Dying would have been easy in a way, all the things unsaid could have been speculated and thought on by the survivor with wistfulness. Yet they both survived which meant everything that came before survived with them in a way, all the heavy load they both bore on their shoulders some of it caused by the other. 

It had been about two weeks since the graveyard. And the time had come to talk of many things. 

***

Neither of them really considered, or _wanted_ to broach the subject of their rather tumultuous past, much less be the first of them to do it. Fortunately settling into a new life, a new _whole_ life afforded enough distractions to avoid it for a time but they both knew this was only a temporary measure.   
  
It was also easy to think that perhaps they didn’t _have_ to talk about anything, this was a fresh clean start after all and perhaps it was best that everything that was done and said as _Axel_ and _Saix_ died with the names.   
  
Except the names did not really die. 

Axel still lived in the mouths of their friends (Axel’s friends, Isa would remind himself as he did not feel like he had earned any amount of friendship at this point in time) all using his nobody and somebody name freely as if they were interchangeable and Lea seemed in no way begrudged by it.   
  
It infuriated Isa on some level, in the way that a kettle rolls just shy of boiling. He dared not parse the feeling or give voice to it so the kettle remained, simmering lowly on the stove of his mind. Full knowing that one day it could--and probably would--boil over. 

While Axel’s name still lived, Saix’s did too and it loomed over and haunted Isa like a cast shadow. Slips of the tongue followed by widening eyes and frantic apologies, no harm was meant in it, Isa told himself that anyway. Yet it did not prevent the way he bristled when anytime he heard the name, one he was trying so hard to bury and one that still haunted him anytime he looked in the mirror when he frantically searched for flecks of gold in his eyes or spots of gray in his hair. 

What they both would do when the distracts whittled away as they settled into their new life, was beyond either of them. They both knew the time would come but both, befitting them, did not seem in a rush to face that day and quietly, privately told themselves if they truly needed to unpack the years and love and hate between them they would do it when they absolutely needed to. 

A new home, a new life. The only thing they really needed to complete the illusion that their previous lives were behind them was some sorely needed new clothes. 

* * *

“What do you mean you never opened it?” Isa sounded incredulous from the other side of a dressing room door in a small clothing shop in Twilight Town as Lea waited outside, sitting on a bench that was a bit too low to the ground and left his rather long legs looking awkward on it. 

“What? I didn’t want to change—what if they didn’t recognize me or something?” Lea called back as Isa tossed another coat he did not care for over the top of the dressing room door as Lea had to lean a bit forward to catch it, haphazardly folding it into the growing rejection pile beside him. 

“You are telling me that when presented with magically augmented clothing given to you by fairies, you elected to wear your old organization cloak? The one you died in?” Isa’s voice called through the door again. Lea bristled at the mention of his death as a Nobody but let the sensation pass, “I don’t know whether to be touched at your sentimentally or think it foolish” Isa added after a moment. 

Lea shrugged, for no one but himself since Isa couldn’t see it, “Knowing you? Probably a bit of both.” He caught another errant piece of rejected clothing tossed over the door. “There has to be _something_ in this store that suits you, right? I know we haven’t been given the luxury of fashion for the last decade…” Lea had already picked out a new wardrobe, in several bags around his feet and one of the new outfits on his person now. He had changed shortly after making his purchase and now they were just waiting on Isa to pick out his share. Which was proving more difficult than either of them would like to admit. “Here, I’m going to pick something out” Lea said with finality, slapping his hands on his knees as he stood up. 

“Oh god” Isa groaned. While he would admit to having no idea what Lea’s current sense of fashion was, he knew well what it was in their youth and it was about as diametrically opposed to Isa’s own as one could get. Loud, bright and colorful whereas Isa preferred more subdued clothing for himself. 

Lea perused the racks of clothing, looking over several jackets. Twilight town never having a full midday sun meant that the town edged on the cooler side. This was no problem to Lea who always ran on the warmer side but he knew Isa to be subjected to chill, if memory served anyway. With this in mind he moved towards the long sleeve jackets, thumbing through until he came upon one that caught his eye. 

Perfect. 

Lea pulled the correct size off the rack, an assumption made by guesswork and rather intense observation he would not readily admit to. Once back at the fitting booths he tossed the jacket over the opening in the top, “Incoming!” He called and held back a snicker at the startled sound he heard on the other side of the door as the jacket no doubt draped over Isa’s head. 

“Must you?” The man sighed from the other side of the door and Lea just laughed in earnest now. 

“C’mon! Keeps you on your toes!” He flashed a grin Isa could not see but he practically felt it through the door. 

Isa looked over the jacket in his hands. In a way it was like the one he wore as a teen, conceptually anyway. It was a silhouette Lea suspected he would still like. 

Lea assumed Isa’s silence was him contemplating the jacket and began to speak for it’s merit, “I grabbed something to help personalize it too, a patch. We can ask Namine to sew it on for you” this was also an attempt to get him to interact with the others more. A thinly veiled attempt but an attempt nonetheless. 

The more Isa turned it over in his hands the more self conscious and nervous Lea became, did he assume wrong? What was he thinking anyway, sure they _used_ to know each other so well but things had changed so much. It would make sense if Isa’s taste had changed. So Lea did what he did best when he felt nervous, he began to babble. 

“I thought maybe you’d prefer more neutral dark colors, and you mentioned how cold it gets here sometimes and—“

“Lea” Isa finally spoke, looking up from the jacket to him, a small smile slowly forming on his features. It was oddly amusing to watch Lea fret over him like this, a welcome sight even, “It’s perfect, thank you”. 

Lea couldn’t help but smile back, for the first time he began to feel like maybe they could just leave everything that was in the past behind them, move forward without having to retread and mend ground that once seemed beyond broken. What was in the past was dead right? Still something bagged at him, the kernel of truth that knew that even if things seemed fine in this moment they would have to address their past lest it fester. 

* * *

Truth be told, it did not take long for the situation to begin to come to a head. 

In hindsight Lea supposed it was naive to think that life would somehow magically be perfect. Maybe he had been hanging around Sora and company too much to even let that be a fleeting thought in his mind. 

He knew Isa and him were going to have to _talk_ about it. The “it” being an invisible gestalt being of all the topics and subjects that they needed to broach but didn’t out of fear so it just grew unseen but increasingly heavy between them. Sometimes Lea wondered if it would be better to suffocate then to let it burst. 

This was fine, right? They didn’t _need_ to have a conversation about everything that happened, they could just forget about it and move forward in their lives. 

Lea hadn’t intended to reach his boiling point. 

Guess two weeks was the socially acceptable amount of time to go from “I’m glad you’re alive” to “you were a real shithead” 

It was the third time Isa had declined coming along to the clock tower to hangout with Roxas and Xion. Lea wasn’t going to push it, he offered every time because Isa was his friend and he didn’t want him to feel left out but _boy_ Lea wished it didn’t come with the guilt trip. 

They came in slightly different flavors and wordings but still tasted like guilt in Lea’s tongue every time. Finally, Lea asked, “Listen, it’s ok if you don’t want to hang around Roxas and Xion.” He said before Isa could even get out what the new excuse was this time, the kind that always left that guilty aftertaste in Lea’s mouth. 

Isa looked up from the book he had been reading at him, quiet for a few moments, considering, before saying, “I never said that.” 

“It’s implied?” Lea gestured with his hands as if the implication was something visible, “It’s cool, really I don’t want you to feel like I’m dragging you along. Not everyone gets along with all their friend’s friends.” 

Isa drew his lips into a line, looking up at him, “When did I say or seem like I didn’t like them?” 

“I don’t know, man maybe when you told Xion she was useless?” Lea sighed 

“I didn’t-“ Isa began 

“Or when you told Roxas he was useless?” Lea continued, undeterred. 

Lea knew he was being a _wee_ bit combative but he had done this tango enough times with Isa to bore of the monotony of the steps. 

Isa looked forward, away from Lea’s gaze, his jaw set in a hard line, “That was—“ 

“Saix. I know. and dragging those kids back to the evil organization that planned to use them was Axel.” 

_The difference between you and me is I apologized instead of just hoping for forgiveness._ He thought but didn’t say. It was a snap thought and he knew better at this point in his life to vocalize every quick fire thought that crackled into being in his brain, so he bit his tongue. 

Silence stretched between them like a chasm Lea knew far too well, he had mapped it’s breadth and shape long ago. For a moment Lea looked beyond Isa who was looking at some point in the middle distance beyond Lea so that was fair. 

“We can’t keep doing this.” Lea spoke, a seemingly uncharacteristic finality in his voice. 

“Doing what?” Isa’s words had a familiar edge to them, there it was. Brewing beneath the surface. Lea was beginning to wonder when this was all going to boil over and he _hated_ having to be the one to constantly strike the match. 

So he didn’t. 

Lea flashed a grin with far too much teeth, in a way that _Axel_ might have. “Come get me when you want to actually talk.” In a few fluid movements he had turned on his heel, waving and sliding on his jacket, door latching shut before Isa even had a moment to completely register. 

* * *

It had been woefully unrealistic to just think everything would suddenly be _normal._

What normal looked like— Lea wasn’t sure, he was just confident it wasn’t this.

Days passed in the way that some days do, uneventful in the grand course of all that had happened in their lives. The search for Sora occupying a great amount of their time, which was good, it always suited them both best to throw themselves into work to deflect from anything resembling a feeling. Perhaps an old bad habit left over from their nobody days. 

While Lea had been the one to first put to words that they needed to unpack the very numerous baggage between them, he found stalling a worthwhile course for many a day while knowing full well that Isa would be content in the same. So the days after the battle and after the reunion passed like sand in an hourglass, barely cognizant of their comings and goings. Days spent coming up with plans and theories with Roxas and Xion, sometimes Namine. Evenings spent with Axel at the clocktower and Isa at the place they were calling home with a book and quiet solitude. 

The tension came in waves as an unseen spector that loomed over them only to be seemingly gone the next moment as if it never was. Easy conversation, no incidents. One could think in those moments that things were actually normal. Yet the moment each would let their guard down to think that perhaps they didn’t _need_ to talk, that perhaps they could get on without addressing the decade old elephant in the room, that something would happen to bring it all colliding back. 

Though Lea had been the one to get the closest to broaching the vast, termotuous subject of their many years together without hearts and the many things they had _done_ over the course of their time in non-existence, he still, with every fiber of his remade being, _hated_ confrontation. 

It was, he would readily admit now, a flaw. 

Would he do something about it? Unlikely. 

What could be done? It was always horrible. Anyone who said cornering a person you had spent the majority of your life with and around and telling them that you needed to _talk_ about everything that had happened between you could be a _pleasant, helpful experience_ was a liar. 

Maybe if Isa seemed content to suffer in terse silence and pretend like the last ten years had been some horrible nightmare and nothing more, then perhaps Lea should let him. 

Except that he had traveled this road before, they both had and they knew well what lied at the end of it. 

So it fell to Lea to once again do the icky job of doing what needed to be done. 

They were going to talk. One way or another. 

* * *

A common truth was that this was normal, natural even though both men would be loath to admit it. Their reunion bordered on the miraculous and for a time that fact alone was enough to provide cover to their decade long ills that festered beneath the surface. This tension they felt now was nothing compared to what it _had_ been, but they both carried the weight of what they had done to each other. Mapped invisible scars on each other in their mind’s eye. Perhaps the other did not hold a grudge, what if it was only their torturous minds? But what if they did? What if at any moment the other would walk out of their lives again? Never to return this time. 

The fact that the thought of the other leaving was such a tantamount fear in their newly beating hearts, should have been the greatest clue, yet years upon years of emotionlessness left the two a little stunted. They were both just too broken souls who died too young, fumbling through all the powerful emotions shoved back into their chests. Love was a powerful scary thing, and after being hurt so profoundly by the world and by each other, flight was a rational response. 

Lea was tired of running, exhausted even. Sure in his not so far away past it appeared as if it was the only thing he was good at. He wondered if Isa was tired of it too, the undercurrent of a decade’s worth of tension they both carried. 

Truly both men dreamed of what it would be like to begin anew, to see and be with each other without the sword of grievances past constantly hanging over their heads, threatening to fall. Without the chains of the past that bound them. They would never move forward if they kept standing still. 

It took a week after Lea’s semi ultimatum for Isa to come to him. Lea needed that, needed him to be the one to act. To assure his own torrent of complicated emotions and to ensure Isa’s comfort in whatever this heart to heart wrought. In truth the ultimatum was toothless, Lea would have continued on with things as they were because despite himself and his past actions he was not one to purposefully rock the boat if he could avoid it. Axel maybe, but not Lea. They would have continued down the path, not speaking, not clearing the air and Lea feared that one day they would misstep, a small hairline fracture would form into a fault line from the weight of everything left unsaid. Every last hurt weaponized against one another. As they did before, back in the organization. So his goal was to remove the arsenal. 

If only it wasn’t so _difficult._

Here they were, awkwardly standing in the living room, the small place they had never before felt so _suffocating._ Lea wasn’t sure what to do with his hands or body. Would sitting help elevate the nervousness he felt? Even if this was _his_ idea? He tried it. It did not. Isa seemed to do the same thing, both not knowing what to do with their bodies and knowing how this conversation was going to go. When Isa finally approached Lea and said that he was right, they should talk, Lea damn near lept out of his skin. Hypocritical of him, sure, as he was the one who wanted this but hearts were a strange and cruel master he was relearning. 

Even though Isa himself appeared calm and collected as per usual on the outside in truth he had been silently trying to muster up the courage to even begin. Lea had put the ball in his court—fair but now he just needed to do something with it. Both men labored under the illusion that the other was going to handle this just fine, that they were the only ones nervous. 

“So…” both began at the same time before Lea gave an exaggerated sigh at himself and Isa cleared his throat. 

Alright. Regroup. Try again. 

“I’m sorry” both blurted out again and Lea damn near smacked his forehead. With a loud sigh, mostly at himself for not knowing what to do or so when he was the one that brought this on her began. 

“I’ll start...I’m sorry.” He said again, “I never meant to abandon you and well in my mind I didn’t, I'm not going to toss blame around but I want you to know that. I promise you I won’t let it happen again.” Having a heart would certainly help with that and he knew he could say how Isa—as Saix—had changed so much over the years of being nobodies that at some point Lea—as Axel couldn’t recognize him but then again he hadn’t been able to recognize himself either. 

“I suppose I wasn’t completely myself…” Isa murmured, “What I recognize now as burgeoning emotions were swept up in what Xemnas—Xehanort did. Every dark thought felt heightened” he admitted, giving an embarrassed shrug after the display of vulnerability when he saw Lea’s eyes widening in horror. They did not talk much about the logistics of what it had meant to be a vessel for a piece of Xehabort’s soul. 

“I’m sorry” Lea said, pain in his voice, pain at trying to imagine how horrific that must have been and the cold knowledge that he had narrowly avoided that same fate. 

“About that? Don’t be.” Isa shifted his gaze, not inclined to talk more about _that_ and Lea understood. 

“We’ve...both done some shitty things haven’t we?” Lea said sheepishly after a moment to break the growing silence. 

Another beat of silence before Isa nodded, “We have.” 

“And I’m sorry for that, for everything. I know we could say we weren’t ourselves and we weren’t...but we...were at the same time, you know?” Lea winced a bit, he was never great with stuff like this. Words. Emotional conversations. Anything really. 

Lea needed to hear it back though, for there were wounds in both sides and he began to hold his breath, wondering what Isa would say or do. 

Isa closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, arms folded as he seemed in deep thought and every moment that ticked by Lea began to wonder what he would say. His mind conjured a thousand different scenarios. Most of them involved berating him. 

After several long agonizing moments Isa opened his eyes and regarded Lea steadily, “I’m sorry as well. For doubting your conviction.” Lea seemed confused but Isa continued, “I thought you would be content, happy even if I just disappeared forever at the graveyard. When I came to the clock tower it was out of selfishness, I wanted to see you one last time even if I knew you didn’t want to see me” 

“That’s not true! I told you I was bringing you home too, didn’t I?” Lea told himself he wouldn’t interrupt and yet there he went. Couldn’t even keep that promise, he mentally chided himself. 

Isa gave a wistful smile, “I know. It surprised me, as much as it could anyway...and then through the haze of the fight I could hear you calling out to me. You never did give up did you?” 

A warmth grew, a fondness in both their smiles as their bodies for the first time since the conversation began, relaxed. It was as if the room itself had exhaled. 

“I like to keep you on your toes” Lea managed with a playful grin, easing now that he had confirmation Isa didn’t hate him for what he had done in the past and Isa had relaxed too. 

“There are things I will never be able to make up for” Isa grew serious again for a beat, “Words...scars” he winced a bit at the last word, casting a sidelong glance at Lea’s side where he knew all too well a rather nasty scar lived. Jagged in the shape of the teeth of his claymore. A mistake. One of the worst mistakes of his life and Lea would always have to wear it on his flesh. And Isa would always have that reminder. Isa looked down for a moment, slowly taking in a breath before meeting Lea’s eyes. 

“But I mean to try. Every day.” It was so vulnerable and so genuine that any edges Lea could have possibly had at bringing up rather literal old wounds would have softened immediately. 

They have both sinned against the other, both hurt and harmed. Their hands were far from clean in that regard, but they also had a second chance. A new start, one that respected and acknowledged the darkness they had been in so they could begin to move towards the light. 

The past was a constant, unchanging, but demanded respect. They had to acknowledge where they had been so they could chart the course of where they would go. Picking up each other’s broken pieces and stumbling along the way but this time they would not do so alone. They would not allow themselves to be divided anymore. 

Lea smiled softly, it was warm and everything Isa loved about him wrapped up in one soft curve of lips. He held out his hand to Isa, waiting for him to accept it, which the other man gladly did. 

“Then let’s try. Together.” 

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
